Over the years we came to Göttingen more and more often and for longer and longer times: in the sabbatical year 1971/1972 with Jonathan, 1978/1979 without children. After renting apartments that were currently available for years, we spent the two sabbatical years and several summers with Irmgard Bokemeyer in Rauschenwasser. For me in particular, Rauschenwasser was a unique and very positive experience. Irmgard had come from the GDR with her nine children in the 1950s and taught housekeeping in Mariaspring. With the help of load balancing, she built a large house near the village of Eddigehausen, where, as her adult children gradually moved away, she accommodated students, guest workers and people looking for a place to stay. From time to time her sister Margot Kube and family lived in the house, and from time to time her son Michael also lived with his family. She ran the house as a kind of Christian commune: we had our own apartment there, but what we needed was taken from the common pantry, we ran errands and purchases for the house in Göttingen, and we kept accounting. The fact that Irmgard took a sofa out of Jonathan’s room when she needed it for a guest was as natural as that she put one of Georg’s conscientious objectors with his wife. She did a lot for other people; For example, handled the correspondence for an illiterate person from the neighborhood or campaigned for the community to build apartments for large refugee families. We made friends with many very different people in Göttingen. First there were parents of friends of the children, then colleagues from the university or from the Max Planck Institute for History, Dagmar and Hannes Friedrich, daughter-in-law and son of Heide Friedrich, the Justus family, which we have already talked about, and last not at least Irene Schultens and her husband Howard. The latter are Americans with strong social and environmental awareness who came to Göttingen a few decades ago to study. As far as I know, Irene has never had a paid job and is still very busy, takes care of elderly people in need, works in telephone counseling and looks after her grandchildren.
Source: Wilma and Georg Iggers, Zwei Seiten der Geschichte. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002, p. 287f (translation)